The Story of a Woman Caught in a Player’s Den

The Story of a Woman Caught in a Player’s Den

“Aunty has a good heart, and money too. Some days, I feel really sorry for her. I can’t find it in me to say she is foolish. She’s just lovestruck, dedicated to an undeserving man who has a pattern of not committing; a perpetual player whose deception is serpentine. But she thinks that she is ‘the one’. Alas! She will learn real soon.”

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She comes over to his place every weekend, mostly on Friday nights. She stays till Sunday evening before taking her leave. On each visit, she never fails to bring along food items—fruits, vegetables, palm nuts, ugba—in big bags to restock her king’s house.

Within a space of two days in her man’s apartment, that womanly presence is felt. The sound of pounding with wooden mortar echoes through the building, accompanied by a lot of worship songs sang with a nasal, soprano voice that has so much vibrato.

In no time, the aroma of a well prepared ofe owerri, ofe akwu, ofe ogbono, would saturate the building. Each distinct aroma follows the other—back to back. Since I can always access the adjoining apartment where everything goes down, during such moments, a visit to the kitchen feels like being on set of Maggi kitchen live show. Because this light-skinned, robust aunty knows how to put together the essentials in excess. She can cook for Africa. There is full chicken and turkey on one side, isi ewu and snail the other side—everything na triple double.

Expenses and funding are borne by her. In her desire to please the love of her life, the laundry she does in the morning would rival most professional dry cleaning services in town. Before you know it, there’s no space for others to spread clothes on the washing line, because you’d find 200 male boxers, 97 singlets, 69 shirts, and 85 tailored trousers that have been washed before dawn.

And when it comes to loving, she gives that man mad loving. Aunty will get all sexy and romantic, strut around the place half-clad, cooing every pet name in the world, while oga boss will remain cold and unresponsive and visibly bored. But she doesn’t seem to care anyway. He is her ‘daddy’.

“Daddy I don’t like this thing that you’re doing. Daddy come and eat biko nu,” she’d say, despite the glaring signs of irritation and disgust on his part that even a Cobhams Asuquo would see.

Aunty has a good heart, and money too. Some days, I feel really sorry for her. I can’t find it in me to say she is foolish. She’s just lovestruck, dedicated to an undeserving man who has a pattern of not committing; a perpetual player whose deception is serpentine. But she thinks that she is ‘the one’. Alas! She will learn real soon.

I, on the other hand, have seen them all. They come filled with excitement, impressed with a lavish apartment, charmed by the sweet tongue laced with enticing promises. They end up walking away, frustrated, on realising the wasted years. Now, Its Aunty’s turn.